Snails breeding

[flaunt]

Some of you may remember my post about six different types of snails that I recently put into my tank.  The species were:

Cerith

Trochus

Bumblebee

Astrea

Margarita

Nassarius

 

Over the past several days I've noticed tiny circular things attached to the front glass of the aquarium.  There are two distinctly different kinds, one being larger with a pinkish tint and the others being smaller and white.  I have never seen them move and they only showed up after putting the snails in the aquarium, so I think they're probably snail eggs.  Which of the above have the greatest liklihood of breeding in the aquarium?  I've heard bumblebees don't reproduce in the aqarium, so I'm pretty sure it's not them.  Also, will they breed uncontrollably (i.e. should i scrape the eggs off?) or not?

[NanoReefer53]

Those probably arn't snails. If you look closely u can see that they are a type of feather dusters. I have a bunch of them in my tank that I scrape off the glass all the time. My strombus snails breed very rapidly and the babies look different. The first start as eggs of course but after hatching and crawling around, they look more like tiny little clear worms with a clear shell.

[The Unit]

i know what u are talking about ...i must have 50 of them all over my glass and probly much more on the rocks....they are little round thing on the glass that have a buch of egg like things in side....i only have Astrea snails and one fighting or queen snail in my tank that i beleive is laying them....any info u have about these things  please pass my way.....gl

[flaunt]

snails will lay eggs on the sides of the glass, right?  i really don't think they're featherdusters as i looked closely at them and didn't see anything resembling "feathers."  the pinkish colored ones have a sac with a yellowish "egg" inside if that's what it is.  the other ones are something like unit described: they have a clear sac and lots of tiny bubble-like things inside.  and i've never seen anything like this until the snails... unit, do yours hatch or do they just disappear?

[reef hugger]

i too have the clear domes with white spots, but have never actually seen anything emerge from them.

 

i like would rule out the margarita and stromella (if you have any of these hitchhikers) as they are broadcast spawners.

 

ceriths lay egg masses that look like a line that goes back and forth made up of little white dots, kind of like the way they eat.

 

i am not sure about the trochus, astrea, bumblebees, and nassarius. i thought that nassarius and bbs didn't climb the tank walls, they only stayed in the sand and rocks. my bbs have never been on my glass that i know of.

 

in reality i don't know what they are. do you have little round shelled snails that hitchhiked. possibly related to the trochus. look here to get an idea of what i am talking about. at the bottom of the page. these might be a possiblity. i have these and they have multiplied quite a bit since the tank was setup. hth

[flaunt]

thanks for the response joshnemily... to my knowledge i never had any hitchhiker snails.  i never saw any in the aquarium until i put them in there myself.  the egg pattern of the one type does resemble the cerith eating pattern, but it's hard to tell for sure.  i'll just wait and see if any baby snails appear!

 

btw- i don't think i can recall seeing the bumblebees on the glass, now that i think about it... they definitely spend the majority of their time on the sandbed or rocks (usually the sandbed).

[pandabehr]

My margarita snails reproduced about three months ago in my system six. I counted about 12 or so live baby snails. So far most of them survived.

 

I saw no signs before they popped up..

[reef hugger]

here is pic of cerith egg mass. you can't see the eggs but, you get the basic shape of it.

[reef hugger]

just to prove me wrong, about 2 days after posting that i have never seen my bumblebees on the glass. lo and behold there is a bb about 2" up from the sand on the side of the tank. lol